Ecology and evolution of phages encoding anti-CRISPR proteins.

CRISPR-Cas are prokaryotic defence systems that provide protection against invasion by mobile genetic elements (MGE), including bacteriophages. MGE can overcome CRISPR-Cas defences by encoding anti-CRISPR (Acr) proteins. These proteins are produced in the early stages of the infection and inhibit the CRISPR-Cas machinery to allow phage replication. While research on Acr has mainly focused on their discovery, structure and mode of action, and their applications in biotechnology, the impact of Acr on the ecology of MGE as well as on the coevolution with their bacterial hosts only begins to be unravelled. In this review, we summarise our current understanding on the distribution of anti-CRISPR genes in MGE, the ecology of phages encoding Acr, and their coevolution with bacterial defence mechanisms. We highlight the need to use more diverse and complex experimental models to better understand the impact of anti-CRISPR in MGE-host interactions.

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Copyright © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

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Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.